


Weight of Survival

by otterbeans



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:39:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otterbeans/pseuds/otterbeans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanji gives birth to Levi's unintentional child. She pretends to be surprised when he shows up for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weight of Survival

**Author's Note:**

> I don't care about tenses, God. I just don't. They exist to taunt me and I'm tired of playing their mind games. Forget it! I'm not giving in to peer pressure. Artistic liberty grammar forever.
> 
> I've seen this idea floating around a lot (Hange and Levi having a child) and I made the terrible decision of ruining the concept for everyone by throwing my interpretation into the fray. Fluff? Ha! What's that? I don't know!
> 
> Please forgive me.

Two short raps. It's how he always knocks, and so she knows it's him. She calls for him as he turns the doorknob-- neither of them really care for formalities.

"Hey! Yes, yes, come in. I was wondering if you'd show up."

He steps in, looking as unfamiliar and uncomfortable as he always does dressed in civilian clothing. First his flinty little eyes take a second to scan the room in appraisal to see if it meets his standards of cleanliness.

It passes. It _is_ a hospital. He likes hospitals. Very orderly.

Then he settles back on her.

"Of course. It's my accident, isn't it?"

"Now is about the time you stop calling it that..."

Hanji smiles wryly and pats her burgeoning belly as Levi crosses the room, removing his coat and folding it neatly over a nearby chair. Which he then shoves a little with his foot to be closer to her bedside. She's sure somewhere in his head, a gentleman and a brute are fighting against each other. The thought makes her snicker under her breath.

Yes, it was their "accident". A poor excuse for an accident after all the times they knowingly brushed with danger for a night of thrills. For awhile they were so lucky that they nearly came to the conclusion that one of them was infertile, but consequences soon came to bite them back. Viciously, in their shared opinion.

Levi was nearly court-marshaled for his misconduct; manpower was far too precious in the Survey Corps to be wasting women on having children, especially not those of Hanji's rank.

Yet to punish him was to punish humanity as well. Nothing could be done. Erwin tightened his leash and worked him mercilessly, but in the Corps Levi stayed. For Hanji, abortion was far too risky a procedure. She simply had to wait out the pregnancy, give birth, and return to her post when she recovered.

The day couldn't come soon enough. Every minute spent out of action was agonizing to Hanji, who was going seven different kinds of stir-crazy from being cooped up. The things she came up with alone at her desk would make the certifiably insane take notice and whisper to each other, "wow, she needs to _calm the fuck down_." It was so bad that Levi felt more sympathetic towards her for her state of mental unrest than the unpleasant condition her body was in.

She was typically fascinated by the pregnancy anyways. It was all very unknown and scientific and it was probably all she could do not to conduct experiments on herself. Levi was only glad that it wasn't something that happened to men.

It seemed very. Sticky.

"What?"

"Nothing," she dismisses with a relaxed wave of her hand, letting his  nasty gaze wash over her like so much nonsense, "I was just thinking, this is going to get pret-ty messy. You might want to leave while you still have the chance."

Levi snorts, and crosses his arms over his chest, jaunting one leg against the other, "it can't be worse than a face-full of Titan guts."

"But, _these_ guts don't evaporate," Hanji replies with a grin, rubbing her tummy tauntingly.

She gets one disgusted twitch out of his right eye. It's more than enough to set her laughing again-- but she swallows mid-peal and squirms, switching to a noise of discomfort.

Levi raises an eyebrow.

"Ugh, just, give me a second," she groans, supporting herself with one hand while jamming the heel of the other into her back, "I swear, I've been a giant chew-toy for Titans, but this is _unbearable_."

For a minute or so, she closes her eyes and breathes slowly. Levi leans on his arms and watches her closely. As the contraction passes, Hanji gently lets herself rest back on her pillows.

"Spasms?" he asks.

She opens one eye and grins at him.

"Do you even know how childbirth works?"

He shrugs apathetically.

"I'm just a thug. Hired muscle."

"It's amazing what mothers didn't teach their sons back in the day."

"My mother was a whore," he replies with a face that shows how little this fact bothers him, "a cheap whore. And you know it. Are you going to explain this to me or not?"

Hanji is always thrilled with the prospect of teaching anyone anything, and gladly launches into her usual theatrical diatribe.

"Well, it begins when..."

"No. Just the important parts."

She shoots him a venomous look. If a book were within reach, she'd hit him with it for interrupting her.

"They're all important!"

"What's happening now," he gestures vaguely.

She grumbles, throws her eyes back as she calculates just how much she's going to have to abridge her lesson, then tries again.

"There are muscles in my pelvis, near my womb, that are sort of..."

How to put this. Levi isn't a stupid man by any means, but his vocabulary isn't that wide outside of the scatological insults department.

"...pulling up and shortening. Making a gap. So there's room for the baby to come out. They do this in waves, and they're called contractions. They're really painful, like a terrible cramp-- Right now I have some time to breathe between them, but they'll occur closer and closer together as the baby gets ready to come out."

"And how long does this take?" he asks.

"Oh, hours. Probably longer, since I haven't had a baby before."

"Well shit," Levi says, and leans his chin in his hand, "I should've brought the paper."

Hanji chuckles and pats his cheek, taking great pleasure in knowing that if anyone else in the world were to do so, they would most likely lose their life.

\--

Despite his earlier disinterest, Levi does stay throughout the whole of Hanji's labor. He doesn't find it to be so awful. He's stayed by the side of the injured before, along with the dying, and all in all this is a much less terrible process. Natural even, disregarding that nature is one of his least favorite things.

And Hanji is a soldier. She knows pain and bears it well; every bone in her body has probably been broken at one point or another, from taunting Titans for a living. When it becomes so bad that she can no longer fully rely on good humor (and being a maniac) to cope, she goes into a state of determined concentration instead.

It's a side of her that Levi has only seen in the most serious of situations, so he can't help but respond in kind. He sits next to Hanji on the bed, rubbing her shoulders and back, holding her hair when she has to vomit, giving her something to hold on to when she has to anchor herself and helping her when she feels the need to move around. It's a quiet affair, their quips brought down to a few select words here and there when she needs a boost of morale.

Day soon becomes night. Candles are lit, and their flickering light causes the perspiration on Hanji's face to glisten, drops rolling down her neck and beading on her breastbone. She lies on her side with a pillow crushed to her chest, contractions now coming so hard and so fast that they're practically on top of each other. It's all she can do to remember to breathe between moans. Levi carefully wets a cloth, rings it out thoroughly, and wipes at her brow with surprising delicacy. Hanji tries her best to smile and turns her face towards him to give him better access.

She had been teasing him all day about how sweet he was being, how scary old Captain Levi was helping a poor pregnant woman in her time of need. But now she's hurting to the point where she's dizzy, and it's dark, and she honestly appreciates him being there.

"Thank you, Levi."

He pauses to regard her, then nods, and finishes dabbing the sweat from her skin. Then he leans forward and touches his thin lips to her forehead.

"It's nothing."

Hanji reaches up to touch his face, fingers brushing against his hair, intending to try and coerce him into kissing her on the lips-- but stops midway to make a another pained sound that catches in her throat in a quizzical manner. Levi looks at her just as quizzically.

"I think," she gasps, grabbing his arm and pulling herself up to sit, "I think I could probably use a doctor now."

"Alright," he nods, making sure she has her balance before leaving to fetch whoever is awake.

\--

"Yes, you're crowning," says the doctor, whom was fetched by the nurse, who just fetched another nurse to fetch a hooded lantern to shine up Hanji's vagina, who had a good laugh over how absolutely ridiculous it all felt, "everything looks alright to me. Do you feel the urge to push?"

"I guess?" she shrugs, "I feel like I've got a load crammed up my business."

Levi's lips twitch in a half smile from his firm station at Hanji's mouth-end.

"That's... basically it, I suppose," the doctor replies, while the two nurses exchange looks of 'Survey Corps nutjobs' with each other, "you can try as soon as you feel you're ready."

"I was ready nine months ago!" she exclaims, grinning with renewed vigor and a manic gleam at the prospect of finally getting this thing out of her and taking another step back towards her old life.

"C-careful!" the doctor warns as Hanji gathers herself up like she's getting ready to fling herself off a building and attack something 50 times her size, "start off gently, and save your energy for the end!"

"Alright, alright," she says, rolling her eyes at all these wimpy inner-wall medical staff. She relaxes just a little, but come hell or high water, this is going to end _now_.

Levi holds her shoulder as Hanji props herself up on her palms and pushes. After a few good heaves she does feel something moving down, but slowly, and shit does it burn.

"Guh, that smarts," she gasps, between gulps of air during a quick rest.

He moves his hand to the back of her neck for the moment, wonderfully clammy as always, "How is anything bigger than a dick supposed to fit through there anyways?"

"Ha!" Hanji barks, "I'll tell you later, it's fascinating. Now give me that rag!"

Levi wrings it out again and twists it into a rope, holding it out in front of her so she can bite it. She does so hard that water pours down her chin.

Both the doctor and nurses are backing off from the situation somewhat, clearly uncomfortable and highly confused by the two. Watching Hanji is like watching a wild animal give birth to a den full of pups more than a regular human mother having a baby, and that foul-mouthed angry-eyed father doesn't ease their misgivings any.

But this is a hospital, not some cave in the side of a mountain. Order must be upheld. As Hanji pushes again, the doctor steps forward and waves his lantern-bearer back in place.

"Y-you're almost there, miss! Just one last push-- put your back into it and force the shoulders out!"

She grabs the inside of her thighs and pulls herself forward, bearing down with all her strength, half-able to see the slick mess of mucus and blood slide out of her to be caught by the doctor. He cleans something out of it's nose and mouth and it soon begins to set up a wail.

Hanji falls back, limp and exhausted, and chuckles hoarsely. Turning her head, she looks at Levi, who is intent on whatever the meds are doing with the baby. She reaches out to touch his hand and catches him a little off-guard, but he still laces his fingers with hers and touches their foreheads together.

"Good work, soldier."

She smiles a genuine smile, which soon melts into mischievousness.

"Hey doc, is it a boy or a girl?" Hanji calls across the room.

One of the nurses looks up from their work, clamping this and cutting that and cleaning everything else, and speaks above the noise, "a girl!"

Levi tsks, while Hanji looks even more pleased.

"Heh, you owe me five coppers."

\--

The girl has a shock of dark hair, and a healthy set of lungs, because she cried for what seemed like ages before muddling herself into a sleepy stupor.

Levi knows that babies make a lot of noise, but he was surprised at the amount of it, and how loud it was. Hanji told him to give her a break, he'd be cranky too if he'd just been awoken from a nearly year-long nap to be introduced to the concepts of light and sound for the first time. He had to concede that point.

Hanji came out of the ordeal well enough for a first-time mother. The bleeding and the tearing was all common, and her shivering easily cured with an extra warm blanket. She wrapped herself and her child in it like a fluffy cocoon of contentment.

The baby yawns, and she yawns twice as wide.

"You tired?"

Even Levi's raccoon eyes are deeper than usual.

"Mmn," Hanji mumbles and smiles, her voice croaking, "More than I've ever been. But I'm way too excited to sleep yet."

"Excited?"

"You know, the jitters. That was a pretty crazy experience... And there's hormones and stuff getting pumped into me now. I can't sleep."

"So it's that thing," he looks around a little, like the word will come to him by inspiration, "where your brain is busy, and it keeps you from sleeping."

"Insomnia. And yeah, probably."

Levi blinks. Slowly. Normally he too battles the beast of insomnia, but it's still far past his bedtime. Hanji would pat his tired head if her hands weren't full.

"I officially give Captain Levi of the Survey Corps permission to leave. If he wants."

"No. I'm sure I won't get to see you for a long time after this," he replies.

"Then at least _come_ here," she insists, making room for him on the bed, "they changed the sheets. And she's not gonna bite. Not you anyways."

He sighs, and gets up from his chair (wonderful chair, supporting him all day) to lie next to Hanji. She sidles up to him and adjusts her blanket a little so he can better see their little girl, wrapped up all snug and warm against her mother's breast.

"Cutie, huh?" Hanji beams, rather proud that this came out of her, "And it's so weird-- their skulls are soft! That's how they fit through. I remember you asking."

Levi just stares at the baby in that unflinching, examining way of his, very gently touching the downy hair on her head. It causes her to paw blindly out with her hands, and he gives her a finger to grab.

"...Weak grip."

Hanji snickers.

"Give her a few days before she's ready to fight Titans."

"What about you?"

"I'll have to re-condition. And babies have to be with their mothers for so long to thrive properly, so it'll take awhile. But I'll be out in the field again before you know it!"

Levi pauses when he catches a glimpse of his daughter's grey eyes.

"And you'll be alright with leaving her behind?"

"...It'll probably hurt," Hanji replies, smiling the smile that came to take the place of the tears that left her long ago, "I'll love her. It's inevitable. But sacrifices have to be made, right?"

"For a world where she won't have anything to fear," he adds for her.

"Exactly. That's the most important..."

The implication of what they were truly saying hangs in the air, and the weight of their own lives becomes that much heavier.

"She'll know us. No matter what happens, at least she'll know us," Hanji says with a keening voice. She wavers dangerously, and Levi holds her.

"I'll take care of her," he reassures her, "Don't worry,"

"I know. I will too"

When Hanji calms down, she invites Levi to join her in her blanket. It's incredibly warm. She comes back to her old self by passing their child to him, then refusing to take her back, and watching the awkwardness unfold. When she begins to cry again, Hanji gives an attempt at breastfeeding with some success, and Levi watches in quiet fascination while also lapsing in and out of sleep.

By the time dawn comes they're both horribly deprived, but it can't be helped. As Levi steps out the door, Hanji tells him not to die, as she always does. Now he means it even more when he tells her he won't.


End file.
